47 Interesting Facts About Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was an atheist, or an agnostic.

Lincoln was a skeptic in his earlier years, but it's clear that in later life he believed in God, though he was not an orthodox Christian. In that he was similar to Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, and not terribly different from Washington.

Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, and jailed his vocal detractors.

So did Davis. It was wartime, and some people were actively supporting the other side.

Lincoln thought blacks were inferior, and said so.

So did virtually all whites back then -- and later. Lincoln was accused by Douglas of supporting race mixing, so he had to speak on race more than other people in politics did, but he did change over time, and by the end of his life, he was considerably less racist than most of his contemporaries.

Lincoln only freed the slaves as a wartime maneuver, hoping for an insurrection in the Southern states.

Emancipation by proclamation could only be justified as a war measure, as it had been justified in the Seminole War. I'm not aware that he hoped for an insurrection in the rebel states. He did hope that emancipation would discourage Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy. Freeing the slaves would also weaken the Confederate war effort, inspire Northerners to renewed devotion to the Union cause, and put the country on the road to complete abolition of slavery.

But, he’s a secular saint to those raised on NEA textbooks.

Are you in England or something? For over a century, Lincoln was highly esteemed throughout the North (and even respected by many Southerners). US textbooks now don't view him as positively, and make the same PC objections that you do.

"Emancipation by proclamation could only be justified as a war measure, as it had been justified in the Seminole War."

Can you find an online reference for that? I've been looking for one, literally, for decades without success.
Somewhere, way back when, I heard or read it was Andrew Jackson in Florida who declared slaves of Spaniards free, a wartime measure which set another precedent for Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation -- the Dunmore & Clinton Revolutionary War proclamations being less than satisfying.
Since then I've looked repeatedly and cannot find something I might link to.

If you're looking for a book, it looks like Act of Justice: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War by Burrus M. Carnahan covers the topic.

The proclamation is sometimes called Jessup's Proclamation after Thomas Jessup who Jackson put in charge of the Seminole War. I can only find scraps about it on line.

It was a complicated situation, because not only were some Seminoles slaveowners, but many were part-African and feared being enslaved by US plantations if they lost the war.

"The proclamation is sometimes called Jessup's Proclamation after Thomas Jessup who Jackson put in charge of the Seminole War.
I can only find scraps about it on line."

Found it! Jessup's Proclamation

"Documented History has proven that this was the “1st Emancipation Proclamation”.
Jesup’s Proclamation.
“Jesup’s Proclamation,” as it came to be known, pre-dated Lincoln’s by twenty-five years, yet both acts shared a legal origin in the arguments of John Quincy Adams.
It was Adams who, in 1836, first asserted that the U.S. Army could liberate rebellious slaves in time of war:
“By war the slave may emancipate himself; it may become necessary for the master to recognize his emancipation by a treaty of peace.”
Within two years of Adams’ speech, his arguments found their first practical application when General Jesup offered freedom to rebellious Black Seminoles in Florida.
Jesup made the offer for military reasons, to separate the blacks from the Indians; this move, he wrote the Secretary of War, would “weaken [the Indians] more than the loss of the same number of their own people.”

Significantly, “Jesup’s proclamation,” as the Black Seminoles came to call it, was the first emancipation of rebellious blacks in U.S. history.*
And it was implicitly premised upon federal authority under the war powers."

John Quincy Adams befriended young Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln, who doubtless listened attentively to Adams' legal theories.

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